I don’t know if I should add certain tags to my latest It Started with Panties story. I have the understanding that people like to read the tags before they invest in a story, but adding certain tags while would make it easier to find for certain people, it would also give content away and take away the power of surprise. Do you think I should add the tags anyways? Is there a way to just hide the tags so people can’t see them so blatantly? It has nothing to do with the type of content btw. It’s not like a dick pic that pops up out of nowhere. I’m just concerned for story based tags that would give away spoilers.
Don't use story based tags then. I figure tags are to help people find and/or avoid certain kinks and preferences, not stuff like <Character Verbs the Noun>
Primarily, tags should help to find stories. So if you can do without the advertisement, I would keep the surprise. If the surprise is something that might be seen as controversial (like non-con or incest), I would add respective tags anyway until there is another way of adding content warnings.
Thank you for the input. I think that clarified things. I’ll leave the tags out. Again I don’t think it’s controversial and the surprise has been positively received so I think at least until it becomes an issue it’ll be better to leave the tags out.
If it's controversial but specific enough to be a spoiler (for instance, the tag is incest but there are only two related characters in the whole story), then you could put a warning immediately before the chapter instead, when what's about to happen could be inferred anyway, but the scene itself hasn't actually started yet (for instance, the two brothers have just been left alone and the next chapter is a sex scene).
